An Expedia scam: a follow-up

Friends, this is an addendum to “I go into a Towering Rage: Airplane Travel today.” I have read that Small Claims Court in Virginia has a top of $5000, and Expedia has cheated Izzy and I out of $1800, but she feels and I cannot disagree (not being a lawyer) that it may be when we clicked “accept conditions,” we accepted this ruthless fleecing. You will remember that two weeks ago I discovered that suddenly I had a 10 hours layover in Iceland going to London and when I tried to change that it took me 5 hours on the phone, only to discover the charges and penalities would made a 2 hour cut in time more money than the ticket cost. Then one week ago I noticed for the first time coming back from London Izzy and I had an 1 day and 3 hour layover. What I left out in my talk with Expedia is my suspicion they changed the tickets at the last moment. But I have no proof.

Around 4:00 today I received a phone call from Expedia. I had four times filed a complaint on their site, outlining what happened to me (see my previous blog linked in above). A young man came on the line, saying he wanted to respond to my complaint (or words to this effect). What happened was this: he said that he could not refund my money as he had first to call Icelandic as their policy needed to be “clarified” (which was what I was told on Tuesday when I was led to spend 5 hours and on Saturday 3 on the phone). He claimed that Icelandic had a policy of not refunding or changing this ticket. I again said (as I did the second time on Saturday) that I had phoned Icelandic on Tuesday and their representative denied that Icelandic had any such policy. They said they had not sold these tickets and had no control over them. They said the tickets were issued by Expedia and it was Expedia setting these rules.

He appeared not to hear me and repeated his mantra of having to call them to “get permission” to refund the money. I replied that if he persisted in this lie, I could do nothing about it, but if he wanted to go off the phone and pretend to call them or do whatever he did, that was fine (as what he does is invisible to me); but if he called back refund the money or make it go for another flight I would be grateful. I got him to acknowledge he had heard what I said and taken it in. There was a pause.

He then repeated he had to call Icelandic, except now he came up with a new rule which it seems I had to obey. He could not follow my suggestion that I get off the phone; and if he wanted to call me back, he could. This was not doable. I had to be on the phone while he phoned Icelandic and wait until he finished. I told him this is absurd. Who made such a rule? He did not say, but repeated it was a rule he had to obey. This what I was told and listened to on Tuesday: I must wait; and again told on Saturday, and after 40 minutes refused to wait any longer. I said a man I had hired to renovate my house today had received a wrong door from Home Depot; he phoned Home Depot and without him staying on the line (his time is valuable), Home Depot called the place where they acquired doors, made the substitute and then called him back. I refused to play this game. He repeated the mantra. I then hung up after I repeated what I had said before (I cannot tell what he is doing during the long periods of waiting and Icelandic had denied his assertions) and that if he called again to tell me he was refunding the money I would be grateful.

About half an hour later this email came into my box from travel@customercare.expedia.com. I read it twenty minutes after that as I had gone to the supermarket around 4:30 pm (shortly after I got off the phone) in the interval:

Dear Ellen,

Thank you for contacting Expedia about your flight reservation. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that may have occurred and would like to assure you that every reservation is important to us.

We appreciate you take the time to let us know your comments, your feedback is very valuable for us to prevent similar situations in the future.

As per our conversation, we have called Icelandair and they unfortunately informed us that all your tickets are non refundable. If you cancel your tickets unfortunately there would be no refund back to your credit card and there is no credit that this airline can provide for future travel use. It means that if you cancel, the value of these tickets will be forfeited.

We tried to call you to inform about this and to also know if you wanted to continue with the cancellation. However, we were not able to reach you. If you still need to cancel this reservation following these rules and restrictions that Icelandair advised, please call us directly at 1-866-310-5768 local, toll-free or 1 404-728-8787. This is an international collect call number, but Expedia will accept the charges for calls to this number and provide the case number M-14539157.

Respectfully,

Michael,
Customer Service Team
Expedia.com

It’s possible he called very quickly after I left and then sent the above email.

I replied as follows:

Dear Sir,

I will not phone you again. I have spent 8 hours on the phone plus today another useless half hour. In your letter you ignore what I told you. On the first five hours on the phone I phoned Icelandic and they told me they did not say the these tickets were non-refundable nor not changeable. They said the tickets were issued by Expedia and it was Expedia setting these rules. I told you if you persisted in this lie, I could do nothing about it, but if you wanted to go off the phone and pretend to call them or do whatever you did, that was fine (as what you do is invisible to me); but if you called back refund the money or make it go for another flight I would be grateful. You then came up with a new rule. I had to be on the phone while you phoned Icelandic. This is an absurd rule. You told me it was a rule you must obey. I said my contractor today had received a wrong door; he phoned Home Depot and without him staying on the line (his time is valuable), Home Depot called the place where they acquired doors, made the substitute and then called him back. I refused to play this game. I hung up after I repeated if you called again to tell me you were refunding the money I would be grateful.

Now I get the same lies, the same game with an invite to phone again.

I will do all I can to tell everyone I can reach about how you have treated me.

As my readers will imagine, I had been upset when I got off the phone, but had remained calm this time. This letter reiterated the deceit. There is nowhere on the site that enables a customer to cancel a flight by using the website; if I go to the website, I reach a place which gives me the same phone number. As seen in the letter, I would be drawn into these phone conversations again. I realize now the purpose of making me wait is to exasperate me and to claim that I disobeyed some rule (that I must be waiting on the line while the Expedia representative is said to be contacting and talking to Icelandic in this case) and thereby am ineligible for a refund. I also realize I should never buy from one of these companies because they reserve the right to change flights and times at any time. It is improbable Izzy and I did not see the 1 day and 3 hour layover until last week, but if Expedia changed it, it’s one of the conditions that they reserve the right to do that.

I am keeping my stated intent at the close of my email reply. I am trying to tell as many people as I can by writing this blog, placing a URL on Face-book and twitter to expose these people. One of my tickets (just for myself, single) is from 8/23 and again on 8/31 (round-trip) so there is plenty of time to cancel; the other for two of us, 10/13 and again on 10/18 (round-trip.

My hope is I will discourage others from buying at Expedia and any other on-line airplane ticket buying service. At least others who read my two blogs will have been warned of what can happen. Never buy a ticket from one of these online services if you value your money, your time, your state of health, your very trip.

21 Responses

I’m confused. I understand that if you cancel your tickets, the money is lost – the tickets are unrefundable and can’t be used for future travel. That implies that if you do NOT cancel the tickets, it may be possible to get either Icelandic or Expedia to arrange for you to use them as a future travel credit. Have you actually officially cancelled them already? If they haven’t been cancelled, you ought to be able to get the credit.

Oh, sorry – I went back and read your previous post, and see that you DID cancel the tickets. Well, I guess that’s that, then. However, I must say I have been unable to take a trip after buying a ticket probably 5 or 6 times in my life, and every single time the airline gave me credit toward a future flight – never encountered one that wouldn’t. Sometimes I used the credit, sometimes not, but it was a simple process enough. They’d send me an email stating I had a credit that was good for a year, and months later when I wanted to go somewhere, I’d use it. About half the time it worked; sometimes it didn’t (for instance, if the airline didn’t go to the location I wanted to go to now, or didn’t have good tickets), and on those occasions I forfeited the ticket price. These were tickets in the $200 – $400 range, so I never sweated it much. I’ve used Orbitz and other sites dozens of times without problems; they can be difficult to navigate but I don’t think they’re deliberately set up to confuse; they wouldn’t stay in business long if that was their game, people would go somewhere else!. The lesson I’d take from all this, if I were you, is in future get somebody else to do the booking for you, who is comfortable and efficient at the miserable process of making bookings. As you know I dislike it myself, and have made mistakes too, but my choice is still to do it myself, because that’s fewer people to make a mistake! Sorry this happened to you…

No I have not canceled the tickets. I cannot cancel them. Expedia’s site does not allow me to cancel them except by phone and when I phoned last Saturday to try to cancel them, I found myself forced to wait for 40 minutes and then began these pretenses that the representative had now to phone Icelandic to ask permission, and then I knew would claim she was going off to to talk a supervisor, and then someone else, each time a wait of 40 minutes to an hour. There is no way to cancel but by phone. In fact the man said it was a rule I had to wait on the phone while he did the different phoning. This rule is ridiculous. There is no law. It’s an attempt to exasperate and to find a non-reason reason to say why they cannot cancel the flight and refund my money.

I did say to them (in the phone conversation, see above) could you put the money to another flight? (Mainly because you advised me I could). No, said he, because first they had to get permission from Icelandic and then talk to the supervisors. It is a rigamarole of pretenses. You see how they play this game. The people hired to do this are trained to lie and put up an endless barrier of roundaround rules “the company” imposes. What company? they want to claim it’s Icelandic. Icelandic denies this.

I don’t think we did make a mistake. Is it probable we’d overlook a 1 day and 3 hour layover, and we did not see that until last week. It was not until I saw that I was determined to cancel and if I could not book with another airline or just not go. I should have printed the original receipt out. But say we did make a mistake: a full month ahead in one case, and 2 and 1/2 months ahead in the other is fair time ahead to ask for a change without heavy penalties and a refusal.

I think I have been cheated egregiously: that the tickets layovers were changed, and then since Icelandic has so few flights nowadays I could not get a better one, and if I did, the penalties and fees exacted by Expedia (not Icelandic) were prohibitive. If I knew a lawyer as a friend, I’d ask what would happen if I went to small claims court. Izzy and I have lost $1800.00

Expedia’s business ethics suck. I shall avoid them like the plague in future. I think internationally the airlines are under regulated. They do not pay Vat in Europe on their fuel, dump it in the atmosphere before landing, adding to pollution and rip off their customers. European Governments make ever tighter restrictions on cars and lorries, yet airlines get a free pass. What are government’s afraid of?

In the US I think it’s lobbyists who in effect bribe congressmen, who then put into place in the regulatory agencies people who will not regulate or oversee the airlines or their intermediaries. Expedia and Orbitz are intermediaries. There are so many car and lorry companies and they are not tightly organized to lobby congress is my guess.

I have had similar problems with these lower cost, third party middlemen. I t becomes possible for one to be batted around between the airline or hotel chain, which neither taking responsibility. It is infuriating and this must change.

“I wonder if there’s some agency you could complain to. This is horrible. Bob”

My reply:

I don’t know of any. I’ve thought of phoning the lawyer I hired to help me get back my driver’s license (it had been unfairly suspended). To hire her is $395 per billable hour, but she will give quick advice on a phone. It’s not enough money to hire her and I know the conditions I signed (as in all the Expedia and Orbitz) say they can change the schedule, but they also say or imply you can get your money refunded or change back. It’s clear this is not on offer here.

I’ve never applied to anyone in Virginia for help of this sort beyond the one lawyer. I remember when Laura’s first husband, Wally, was so stupid and prestige-oriented he leased a car on dreadful terms and apparently had to pay far more than he had understood to return that car. Jim himself simply paid the money to free Laura who had co-signed.

To sum up, if I’m understanding properly: Icelandic says they have no policy refusing you future credit for a ticket you don’t use, but they can’t implement this because you didn’t buy through them but through Expedia. Expedia says they can’t give you future credit without consulting Icelandic, and their “rules” specify a sort of conference conversation, or at least Expedia contacting Icelandic while you wait on the line. Well, if I’m reading this right – perhaps you could agree to the conversation, even if it means more time on hold and more annoyance? Wouldn’t it be worth it to try, if there’s any chance at all of getting a credit, rather than lose $1800? I mean, airlines do give credit if you can’t take a flight and tell them before the flight. It’s got to be possible, however frustrating the process!

No you don’t have it right. Expedia says that as far as they know they cannot refund and there is no exchange. They offer as if a favor to call Icelandic to see if they can do anything but doubt they can; they hold out as a candy favor what they are saying they can’t do. You might suppose hanging in there is a sign they’ll change their minds but the letter I printed shows not. At no point have they said at all they will refund the money or give me a raincheck, only that if I stay on the phone endlessly they will check with Icelandic since it’s Icelandic that is the obstacle, not them.

It is true that I have not accused them of changing the layover time. I have no proof. But that is the start of this. Last time I had a print-out, and last time it was Aer Lingus. I suppose I should instead say never take Icelandic because nowadays they have very few planes a day going out of their airport. I cannot tolerate an 18 hour delay nor a 1 day and 3 hour one. Expedia did that to me. Icelandic claimed they did not sell this ticket; how that is when the airline is them I don’t know but I do know that the British airways young man said he did not sell the same tickets for British airways that Expedia does. It’s a different set of tickets and times — perhaps BA sells these at a cheap rate to Expedia who then loads them off, but they are for economy flights which may be changed at any time.

Diana, do you think somehow that I am responsible for not getting my money back? Did you not say this has happened to you and you have lost hundreds? That is the message I’m getting from you. I know you must be thinking thousands of people use this middle man. Yes and hundreds get rooked. Your other point of view is I should swallow this, forget it, dismiss it from my mind. In a way I am by telling other people. I can’t get them to do the right thing unless I go to a lawyer who might tell me I can’t anyhow but I can tell what happened in the hope that I hurt their sales

I tell this story others don’t tell because they are too ashamed. I wish more people would come out individually. Of those who have told me something similar happened to them, no one has told their story publicly.

It’s the same spirit that led me to say aloud how horrible is cancer, that it’s a pandemic, there is no such thing as a battle a person is in charge of, how bad and mean and outrageously expensive are the hospital and medical services; and also how deeply wounding it is to be widow. Others may find comfort in knowing they are not alone.

OK, I think I see now. Expedia’s offer to call Icelandic was an empty offer. And Icelandic never promised you anything. I believe you all right: just because I’ve never had an airline refuse to give me a credit, doesn’t mean it never happens; it did to you. The times I changed my mind about using a ticket, there were fees and I was told I’d have to pay the difference if the fare for my later trip was more. The times I’ve lost the money, happened because I did not use the credit given. Usually that was because the next trip I wanted to take was somewhere that airline didn’t go, or the times, routes or prices were hopeless, or I’d exceeded the year allowed. But I have never come across actual absolute refusal of the future credit before. That’s why I must have sounded incredulous. I’ve just now done a little search, and I see the rules I’m familiar with, do apply to the commonest airlines, American, United, Delta, etc. But nothing about Icelandic, and when I went to their website I see all this about needing cancellation insurance to get a refund, and nothing whatsoever about credit toward future trips! Well, that’s enough right there to make me resolve never to use Icelandic – but if it does have different policy than most airlines, who knew? Or is it different because it was an international flight (which the ones I cancelled never were). It sure is a muddle, but no, I can’t see that there’s anything you may have done wrong, except maybe not to buy cancellation insurance for an international flight; but that’s no crime. What I’d like to know is if this policy is unique to Icelandic, or if it’s true of international flights in general? Well there, I’ve just researched a little more. Bottom line is that although no international airlines give refunds on unrefundable tickets more than 24 hours after purchase, some (Singapore) will give credit for a future flight – others will not. British Airways doesn’t either. I guess I never knew this because I always have ticked the box for travel insurance for international flights simply because they are so expensive and I didn’t want to lose that much if anything changed – and in our house, because of Peter’s health, there is always a real chance that I might have to cancel an international flight. I actually did cancel an Alaska flight because of his illness, and had to produce forms from a doctor to get a refund – and it only refunded HIS ticket, not mine! Well, lesson learned, travel insurance for international flights…but it’s sure an unpleasant lesson to have to learn. Disgusting really.

Why has it got to be possible? Have you never heard of people being treated with horrific injustice? mine is a minor infraction in comparison to say a man who killed himself a few weeks ago: he had killed a police man 40 years ago; he has utterly reformed and led an exemplary life; he built a program for other prisoners to rehabilitate; it was shut down by the prison who didn’t want him to have any satisfaction or look good more than they cared about rehabilitation. He has been up for parole 15 times; this last time a judge said the parole board had violated the law. Yet again they denied the man parole. It was not possible for him ever to have justice or compassion. Read what is done to people in prisons. Read about how daily police murder black people flagrantly. Read about women abused for years and finally under threat of life killing first and then put in jail for decades for defending their lives.

Read about the scams Donald Trump has inflicted on people. He has grown super-rich by bankrupting others in New Jersey and they could do nothing about it. Have you read about his fraudulent university? Hundreds are paying huge debts to credit card companies, having been deluded into paying for services Trump never provided? They were foolish even to think he would get them a job And guess what? millions knowing this still think he would be a decent president of the US, and help them. They are voting to put in charge of them a man who shows he despises them and will rook them. He lies continually and they don’t mind.

Are you aware some local gov’ts are using traffic violations to gouge people for money and if they don’t pay put them in prison.

Have you come across health care insurance companies? Do you know how in millions of cases they deny payment for something after the person has been paying premiums for decades. That if you don’t pay the cost, your credit worthiness goes down. That you can be hounded by companies set up to hound debtors’. This is so common that I’ll lay a bet there is scarcely a person in the US who has not been cheated that way,

I suppose it was my fault for using Expedia and trying to get a bargain. So many do this and their luck holds. That is the lure. I will never EVER do so again. One lesson is there is no inexpensive lunch. Anyone trying to get a bargain should expect ill treatment. My father once went to small claims court after having been cheated of a couple of thousand dollars for a good living room set. The company brought shoddy to his door. The judge said to my father, why did you think such a small sum of money would bring you good furniture? It was implied he should have known better not to believe such come-ons.

Do you really believe the world a just place monetarily? I’m startled. Of course it’s possible that it’s not possible to get my money back from these people.

Honestly Jim would have told me to dismiss it from my mind, not write such blogs at all, and he would not even have phoned Expedia the second time. He told me to pay a heath care bill for some equipment Kaiser was supposed to pay the rental fee for, refused, and it was egregiously unfair. Jim said the medical equipment company would just keep pestering me and eventually send it to a debt collector. What he did not foresee was they would hound me a second time for the money. They did. Want to hear about that one?

I don’t know if he ever used these online companies. I never asked about how he bought tickets going to Europe. It was nearly 6 years ago or more the last time we went. But one experience like this and I know he’d never ever use them again. And so I shall follow suit.

For what it’s worth, I can’t see that it’s actually Expedia that was at fault, but the airline. They seem to be brutally strict about international flights, in most cases not even granting future credit, which you can get on domestic flights. Airlines can’t cheat you like health insurance and the prison system can and do. They’re a business, and if enough people are getting cheated, the word will get around and the airline that does this would get a bad name and have to fold. They can however do the sneaky “fine print” thing, leaving you burned, but unable to really protest because the rules are inarguably there, though buried in fine print. I saw while I was researching a few minutes ago, some instances of other customers who’d wanted to change flights because of illness or other circumstances, getting similarly burned. It’s a darn shame and I can’t think what step you can take next, other than calling a lawyer for advice; maybe they’d make a call or write a lawyerly threatening letter to Icelandic for you, that might scare them into granting a credit. You certainly did nothing wrong in trying to get a bargain fare, or using Expedia; millions of people do. International flights seem to have more draconian rules…and now I’ve learned something too. I’m sorry to have learned it at your expense.

Why do you want to absolve Expedia? yes maybe the airline is doing this too. But if my speculation is right, Expedia buys up so many flights (as a middle man) and re-sells them supposedly at bargain prices. So it’s Expedia that chooses not to refund. Yes they were not the people who changed the number of people on a given plane so I and my daughter (nobodies) were bumped off, twice. But they are the people refusing to give me a refund.

I have no interest in absolving Expedia – zero! It just seems to me that it’s the airline’s policy that’s the bottom of it all. Being nobodies doesn’t come into it, all alike are treated as cattle on airlines these days. But a lawyer might make a difference. If anybody knows a travel agent they might have some advice…

“Sadly, too many people, which included me until about a year ago, believed the “old” way of doing business, in which the consumer had strong legal protections, still operated. I still can’t believe it was legal for United Health Care to do what they did to me. Ethically, it was indefensible. But the corporations have, apparently, systematically had ALEC legislation enacted while nobody was paying attention so that they can bill what they want on the basis of any technicality they come up with … It would be worth it to go to a lawyer very briefly I think.”

I do not use third party middle men. While their posted prices are usually lower at first glance, I find that contacting the hotel, airline, restaurant or whatever myself usually gets me the lower price, and I am dealing directly with the people who are serving me. Plus, when I show up at the hotel, airlines, or whatever, I often have a name and a contact. Forget hotels.com. Forget expedia. Forget the city office that lists the top ten hotels and then offers to make the arrangements for you. Use these sites to find prices and then deal with the real providers.

Thank you for contacting Expedia about your flight reservation. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that may have occurred and would like to assure you that every reservation is important to us.

We appreciate you take the time to let us know your comments, your feedback is very valuable for us to prevent similar situations in the future.

As per our conversation, we have called Icelandair and they unfortunately informed us that all your tickets are non refundable. If you cancel your tickets unfortunately there would be no refund back to your credit card and there is no credit that this airline can provide for future travel use. It means that if you cancel, the value of these tickets will be forfeited.

We tried to call you to inform about this and to also know if you wanted to continue with the cancellation. However, we were not able to reach you. If you still need to cancel this reservation following these rules and restrictions that Icelandair advised, please call us directly at 1-866-310-5768 local, toll-free or 1 404-728-8787. This is an international collect call number, but Expedia will accept the charges for calls to this number and provide the case number M-14539157.

Respectfully,

Michael,
Customer Service Team
Expedia.com

My reply:

Why should I cancel the reservation by phone? Why do you not provide a place on-line for me to cancel it? Why should I have to speak to such people as you ever again? this is another absurdity. If I cancel it, you tell me you will not refund my money. So what can I get out of cancelling? all I do is provide you with four seats you can re-sell again.

Your story about Icelandic is untrue. I spoke to them myself and they denied they had any power over the tickets, how the money was handled, refunds or exchanges. My understanding is that you buy a certain amount of tickets or flights from Icelandic at some cut rate and then you re-sell. All the conditions of these sales have nothing to do with Icelandic. If I wanted ever to fly Icelandic, I should contact them directly and I would get available different flights.

As I’ve also said I’ve done all I can to advertise what has happened on-line.

My blog has been read by a few hundred people now; many have replied sympathizing and some saying Never use a middle man; that Expedia has gotten “much worse in the last few years;” that the way the law is written a company can deny a refund on any technicality they want to invent. I will continue to tell anyone who is about to use Expedia what happened to me.

You and your company have treated me disgracefully and shamelessly. I realize you personally are doing this for a living: how you reconcile yourself behaving this way to others (the rigmarole you repeated to me on the phone especially) I don’t know. You don’t include your last name. You don’t want your social identity to be known.

On Monday morning I will phone my lawyer. I surmise I will be told that even in small claims court (which is where I would go), since I signed accepting “conditions” which probably include no refund if you don’t want to provide one if I cancel, she will not be able to help me. But I will speak with her to hear what she has to say about this.